


Rainwater Worlds

by Goldberry



Series: A Series of Promises [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-29
Updated: 2012-11-29
Packaged: 2017-11-19 20:29:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/577338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goldberry/pseuds/Goldberry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is nowhere. Everything has collapsed. There are no standing structures left in the city.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rainwater Worlds

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for major character death, though the death is neither Neji nor Tenten. Offscreen death of other major Naruto characters.
> 
> This piece is actually a prequel to the first piece, "The Last Promise" but I intended it to be read in this order.

  
It feels like it’s been raining for days on end, great torrents of water creating rivers of ash and debris, turning the whole world gray. Every hour is filled with mud and toil and the ever-present fear that they will be found. There is no safe place to hide, no haven for them now when he needs it the most.  
  
He searches anyway, half-running forward, scouting the terrain under a heavy cloak, the hood pulled up to cover his hair and mask his eye color. There’s nothing. Nothing for miles and miles but ruin. Someone opens in his chest, a great void that constricts his breathing, eating at him. It takes him a moment to name it, he’s felt it so rarely.  
  
 _Panic_.  
  
There’s a low cry from behind him and he pivots sharply, loping back, directing chakra to his hands in preparation for _Jyuuken_. Hinata is kneeling on the ground when he arrives, her cloak drenched, her back heaving. He stiffens, wondering how someone managed to evade his sight, when he realizes that Tenten is still there, her hand on Hinata’s shoulder, murmuring to the other woman. She would not be so relaxed if they’d been attacked.  
  
“Tenten.”  
  
She looks up at him, curls of damp hair escaping from her hood. She looks drawn and worried and the horrible feeling in his chest worsens as he nears her.  
  
“We have to find shelter, Neji,” she tells him, lowering her voice for Hinata’s sake. His cousin isn‘t listening anyway, caught within the rippling pain of a contraction. “She can’t go much further and someone is bound to hear her.”  
  
“There is nowhere,” he answers flatly. “Everything has collapsed. There are no standing structures left in the city.”  
  
Tenten’s pale face scrunches and she clutches his arm as Hinata rocks forward, whimpering. “Are you sure?” his teammate asks, and it a measure of how desperate they are that she does. She has never questioned him before. “Look again, Neji. Please?”  
  
She must see something in his face for she releases his arm and kneels by Hinata’s side, her arms going about the smaller woman’s shoulders as she talks his cousin through her pain. Lifting two fingers, Neji activates the _Byakugan_.  
  
There’s nothing. Nothing but puddles and soot and fallen bricks, endless streets of rubble and¾  
  
“A quarter of a mile east,” he says aloud. “There’s a foundation. The house is gone but just outside it there’s a door in the ground, still intact.”  
  
“A basement,” Tenten breathes. She grips Hinata’s arm and pulls the other woman to her feet. “Just a little further, Hinata. I promise. Then you can rest.”  
  
Neji leads them as the sky grows darker overhead, thunder rumbling in the distance. It takes them almost half an hour to cover the short distance, due both to Hinata’s worsening state and the mountains of desolation in their way. When they finally find the basement, Neji jerks open the rusty door, sends a silent message to Tenten, and goes down first into the dark. The small room is clear, however, filled only with shelves for canned vegetables, a broken radio, and a neatly folded pile of old blankets. He takes a flashlight from his pack and makes a bed out of the blankets before lighting one of their few candles and setting it close to the stairs so that it can breathe. He calls up to the women.  
  
“It’s safe.”  
  
Hinata’s face is white in the dim light as Tenten helps her lay down on the makeshift mattress, propping her head up with Neji’s folded cloak. Neji goes up the stairs to bar the door, setting a paper seal over the latch in case anyone tried to open it from the outside. When he returns, Hinata is panting, her hands pressed to her stomach.  
  
“The contractions are…very close,” she whispers, pained. “The baby is coming.”  
  
Tenten stills for only a moment and then she takes Hinata’s hand in hers, squeezes it. “Tell me what to do,” she says. Neji can tell his teammate is frightened, out of her element, but he’s never been more proud of her than he is in that moment. Hinata smiles weakly.  
  
“Just help me,” she says.  
  
The birthing takes about two more hours, Hinata having been in labor for the last ten. Neji stays near the stairs out of their way, watching as his cousin struggles to bring the new leader of the Hyuuga, perhaps of all Konoha itself, into such a blank and dismal world. The storm reaches them in that time and lightening cracks overhead, drowning out Hinata’s screams.  
  
“Just a little bit more,” Tenten coaxes, her voice cracking. Hinata is tiring and covered with sweat and there’s blood on Tenten’s hands, more than Neji thinks there should be. “One more push, Hinata. I can see the head.” She smiles, tear tracks on her face. “You can do it, I know you can. Just one more.”  
  
Hinata takes a breath and somehow manages it, half-screaming through tightly clenched teeth. The baby slips from her body and Tenten catches it in one of the blankets, quickly clearing it’s mouth and nose as it lets out it’s first cry.  
  
Even in the candle light, Neji glimpses the edge of a black seal on it’s back, put there by it’s mother while still in the womb. A dangerous thing to have done to an unborn child but it had been their only option. Naruto had been dying before their eyes and even Hinata had known that no one but one of his line could bear the Fox.  
  
“Ranmaru,” Hinata whispers, almost voiceless, as Tenten cuts the cord with one of her knives and lays the child in her arms. “Ranmaru.”  
  
It’s a boy.  


* * *

  
  
Hinata dies in the small hours before dawn.  
  
It’s little more than a long exhale and she’s gone, looking almost as if she’d just fallen into a peaceful sleep. Neji closes his eyes briefly, stricken, as Tenten trembles besides him, one hand over her mouth. They had both been keeping vigil through the night when Hinata’s bleeding hadn’t stopped. It had only been a matter of time.  
  
The baby is asleep in the crook of his mother’s lax arm. It’s several minutes before Tenten reaches out, her hands shaking, to take him gently from the woman he had only known so briefly. Silently, Neji gets to his feet, drawing one of the blankets up and over his cousin’s body, covering her face.  
  
So young, and gone with all the rest. Neji might have envied her if not for Tenten.  
  
She is watching him, her eyes large in the semi-dark, a baby cradled close to her chest. She looks half wild, hair damp and disheveled, dried blood on her arms, so exhausted he can almost feel it. They are both quickly reaching the end of their endurance.  
  
“What do we do?” she breathes.  
  
He swallows and leans down to grab their packs.  
  
“Burn it,” he says.  


* * *

  
  
They set fire to the entire basement, letting great clouds of black smoke rise in the air. They need it to burn hot, hot and dark. The fire would bring people, perhaps even Pain’s spies. It had to look as if Hinata and her child had died there.  
  
They watch the flames for only a few minutes, both of them once again in their cloaks, the only protection they have against the light drizzle that is falling. Tenten has the child in her arms, her cloak pulled over it as it sleeps. Neji throws his forehead protector into the inferno, watching the material catch immediately.  
  
Tenten makes a sound in her throat but doesn’t move. She understands why. When someone finds the plate, they will know a Konoha ninja died there.  
  
“It’s time to go,” he says quietly.  
  
Neither of them say anything but turn as one, the grief still too raw for words.  
  
They only have each other now.  


* * *

  
  
They leave Konoha, heading westward to one of the tiny, farming communities. It’s a safe distance away from the village and has not yet drawn Pain’s notice. By that time, the baby is awake and crying with hunger, setting Neji’s nerves on edge. Tenten does everything she can to soothe it but in the end, she looks up at Neji with dark-ringed eyes.  
  
“How are we going to feed it?” Her voice is so heartbreakingly hopeless, he has to look away.  
  
Neji knocks on the first door they come to and, when no one answers, he breaks it down. Tenten is too tired to protest and follows him inside faithfully. They search the kitchen and realize they’re in luck. The house they’ve broken into must have a baby for there are ready bottles in the refrigerator. Neji takes one and hands it to Tenten who sticks it under her arm, close to her body. Neji looks at her for a long moment until a faint blush stains her cheeks.  
  
“I think you have to warm it,” she says.  
  
She takes the child into the living area while Neji secures the door again, this time stringing wire to keep it from opening. The people who owned the house were farmers, not ninja, and he did not want to hurt them if he didn’t have to.  
  
He returns to the main room to start a fire, keeping half an eye on Tenten and the baby. They are sitting in one of the stuffed chairs near by, Tenten having shrugged out of her wet cloak, the baby in her lap as it fed. It didn’t seem to mind the bottle, a blessing Neji gave silent thanks for, one tiny fist waving awkwardly as it drank.  
  
By the time Neji has a fire going in the hearth, the baby is done and is half-dozing again, making quiet little noises. Neji lays their cloaks near the heat to dry and drops onto the couch, every bone aching. After minute, Tenten rises and joins him, curling into his side with his arm around her shoulder, the baby cooing in the crook of her arm. Neji looks down at it and finds murky blue eyes looking back at him. In time, those eyes will turn a pale gray. Neji isn’t sure how he knows, but he does. The child has inherited its mother’s _Byakugan_.  
  
“He’s so small,” Tenten murmurs, letting the baby reflexively grip one of her fingers. She shifts her head against his chest. “Can we really do this?”  
  
“We have to,” he replies quietly. “There is no one we can entrust him to.”  
  
“I know,” she replies softly. She tilts her head back, enough to see his face. “But I…I don’t know how to be a mother, Neji. What if I do something wrong? Or I _don’t_ do something and he grows up hating me? Or¾”  
  
He cuts off her worries by kissing her softly, one hand against the side of her neck. She tastes like rainwater and he can’t help but linger, drawing out the kiss until they’re both a little winded. Pulling back, he tucks a lock of errant hair behind her ear.  
  
“We’ll both do the best we can. That’s all anyone could ask for.”  
  
“She made me promise,” Tenten half-whispers and Neji’s eyebrows draw together. “When the contractions started. You were ahead of us scouting, I think. She made me promise that we’d keep him safe.”  
  
Neji closes his eyes. “Then we will,” he says simply and feels Tenten relax at his side. They fall asleep that way, the three of them, a new family made from ash and death and hope.  


* * *

  
  
Within the next few days they learn that the house they’re borrowing doesn’t belong to a family with a baby. It belongs to a family with a litter of _puppies_. Neji finds them out in the barn, apparently motherless. He also finds three milk cows.  
  
“We’ve been giving him milk from a _cow_?” Tenten says, astonished, when he tells her. She looks slightly disconcerted and he wonders what sort of milk she _thought_ they had been feeding the baby.  
  
“It appears that way.”  
  
She frowns. “Do you think it’s safe for him?”  
  
He answers truthfully. “I don’t know, but we didn’t really have a choice.” He watches her think for a minute, the baby gurgling on the floor where she had been in the middle of changing him.  
  
“I think we need an outside opinion,” she says finally.  
  
That afternoon they go to the neighbors, another family of farmers who explains that a lot of people have fled the tiny village after hearing about Konoha’s destruction. Neji supposes that means the house they’re staying at was abandoned for the moment.  
  
Tenten spins a story to the housewife and seems to find out what she needs to know. She comes away with a metal strainer and some sort of powder - iron supplement, she explains. It turns out that cow’s milk is not very healthy for a newborn, being too high in fat and too low in iron, but as it’s their only option, they’ll have to make due until they can find formula, or a nursing mother who wouldn’t mind feeding another baby.  
  
Tenten shoots down that last option later that evening.  
  
“As you said, there’s no one else we can trust,” she reminds him, smiling at the baby as he makes little baby noises in her lap. “Any mother we find could get word to Pain or one of his lackeys that there’s a motherless baby close to Konoha.”  
  
“He’s not motherless,” Neji says evenly, and Tenten looks up at him quickly, a sweet expression on her face that warms something inside of him.  
  
“I love you,” she says softly, still gazing at him, and all the terrible things in their lives suddenly vanish.  
  
“I love you, too,” he murmurs.  


* * *

  
  
They spend two weeks in that house before they pack up their meager belongings and head towards the nearest village large enough to have a store that sells baby formula. The rain clouds have moved on and it’s sunny, birds singing in the trees alongside the road. The day seems so perfect that Neji actually feels uneasy. How can the world seem so happy when Konoha had been razed to the ground and the Hokage murdered?  
  
The Hokage’s heir is currently in a sling Tenten has fashioned to fit over her shoulder, allowing her to carry the baby across her chest but keep her hands free. She seems happier as well, rested, and comfortable with the child making spit bubbles at her. Neji relaxes a little, just looking at them. They have survived this long, they would keep surviving.  
  
The village they come to is not a ninja village but it has stores and restaurants and they find baby formula right away, along with about a dozen other things Tenten swears the baby needs. Neji arches an eyebrow at her but lets her go. They had both been paid for a mission just before the attack on Konoha and it was enough to support them for a little while, at least until Neji can figure out how to safely withdraw money from the Hyuuga coffers spread throughout Fire Country without broadcasting the fact that he was alive.  
  
They take their purchases and stop to eat at a little ramen stand, a memory of Naruto hitting him so abruptly that he stills, struck by it. Tenten places a gentle hand on his wrist.  
  
“Neji,” she says. He sits.  
  
The cook chats with them, admiring the baby and relating second-hand news regarding Konoha that is completely wrong. Tenten nods in the right places while Neji listens for any news of Hinata. It comes at the end, just as they’re finishing.  
  
“You know, they say the Hokage’s wife had a baby, too, just before she died. Poor thing. Fire of some sort, I heard. There’s talk though that the baby survived. The new ninja lord is looking for it somethin’ fierce. “  
  
Tenten blinks but Neji intercedes before she can say anything. “I heard the baby died as well,” he pretends to recall, gathering their things. “Stillborn, they say.”  
  
The cook nods dubiously but Neji knows he will start spreading the rumor to his customers. It’s all they can do for now.  
  
He takes Tenten’s elbow and guides her away, down the street. They stay at a hotel that night and make love before the baby wakes for his midnight feeding. Neji gets up with him, allowing Tenten to rest. He sits by the window with the baby in the crook of his arm, one tiny hand wrapped securely around a long lock of Neji’s hair, the other waving about as he drinks.  
  
Ranmaru’s hair is as dark as Hinata’s and very fine. Neji fingers it gently, wondering what sort of person he will grow up to be. He doesn’t wonder what sort of ninja. He will be just as strong as his father and Neji will teach him how to use their family’s techniques, as no one ever did for him.  
  
Their family.  
  
Neji pauses a moment to contemplate that. The child watching him with so much trust is the last of the Hyuuga line, that Neji is aware of. What’s more is that they’re closely related by blood. Though Neji and Hinata had officially been cousins, biologically they’d also been half-siblings since their fathers were twins.  
  
Neji traces a finger down Ranmaru’s chubby cheek. “It seems like I could be your uncle,” he tells the baby softly.  
  
His nephew appears to think that would be just fine.  


* * *

  
  
When Ranmaru’s eyes start to change from blue to gray, Neji knows it’s time. They cease traveling from village to village and disappear into the wilderness. They buy a small little house in the woods with money they’ve saved from odd jobs and Neji makes sure it’s stocked with food and supplies and baby formula. He’s stays there almost a month making sure Tenten and the baby are settled before the night comes when he knows he must tell her.  
  
“I’ve got to leave.”  
  
They’re lying in bed, Neji propped up on one elbow so he can look down at her. She’s very beautiful there in the moonlight, young and lean and everything he’s ever wanted for himself. She reaches up, traces a finger down the side of his face.  
  
“I know,” she whispers.  
  
His expression shifts in surprise. “How did you know?”  
  
She smiles softly, sadly. “It feels like you have been leaving for a long time.” She is quiet a moment, just watching him. “I will go crazy out here by myself,” she says finally and he smiles a little, for her.  
  
“He’s going to get bigger,” he tells her. “You won’t have time to go crazy.” He strokes a hand through her hair, spread out over the sheets like silk. “I will come back every few weeks to check on you and bring supplies. It’s important that we keep tabs on Pain and his movements. Out here…” he trails off, looking for the words. Tenten has them.  
  
“…the world passes us by.” she supplies. He nods.  
  
“That’s very dangerous for us,” he says.  
  
“I know.” She closes her eyes but Neji has already seen the pain there. “I wish it wasn’t.”  
  
He leans down and kisses her, urgently, deeply.  
  
He does, too.  


* * *

  
  
The first time he leaves is the easiest. Neither of them know how this is going to work out, they don’t know how it will end.  
  
His return to the villages, to the people, to never looking anyone in the eye, to listening for any inkling of Pain and his plans is a little like dying. Everything turns to shades of black and gray and white and the loneliness of his existence is laid bare. All of his comrades, all of his family are dead or in hiding. He searches for familiar faces sometimes, glimpsing memories out of the corner of his eyes but they’re not really there. Pain has put a bounty on Konoha ninja. Anyone seen wearing the Leaf sigil is to be brought to him for questioning.  
  
The common people don’t care. To them, Pain is ninja business. He has nothing to do with their crops or trading or the latest fashion. Some might have been loyal to Konoha once, but a ninja is a ninja to them. As long as innocents aren’t killed, the ninja can do what they please to each other. Neji hears that sentiment over and over, in every bar and tavern, every restaurant.  
  
The life he knew is truly well and gone.  
  
He spends three weeks roaming, spreading rumors where he can, keeping notes on sightings of Pain and those he controls. He doesn’t allow himself to think about Tenten and the child, not until dark when he can close his eyes and imagine them safe in the forest. They have to be safe. They’re all he has left to go home to.  
  
At the end of the third week, he gathers supplies from a string of stores, never purchasing too much at any one so as not to draw attention. He takes a different route back into the forest than the one he left on and it takes him another day before he sees the little house, smoke curling faintly from the chimney.  
  
Neji comes alive again.  
  
Everything is in bright color, everything smells better, looks better, tastes better. He drops his packs and Tenten throws her arms around his neck in an embrace so tight he can’t help but return it. She’s lost a little weight and looks a little tired, but her eyes are the same amber-gold and her smile heals him.  
  
“I’ve missed you,” she whispers and she still hasn’t released him, as if he might disappear if she does. He closes his eyes and bows his head over her shoulder, inhaling her scent.  
  
“Everything’s alright now,” he says.  
  
The baby looks as if it’s grown in only three weeks, the boy gurgling at him when Neji leans over his cradle. Ranmaru’s eyes are a clear silver-gray.  
  
“He looks like her,” Neji comments. Tenten comes to stand beside him.  
  
“He does, doesn’t he? He’s sweet, too, though I can see Naruto in him, from time to time.” She makes a face. “Especially when he’s being fussy.”  
  
He glances over at her. “Have you had any trouble?” He’s not referring to the baby and she knows it. She shakes her head.  
  
“I’ve rigged traps a little ways from the cottage.” He nods, he’d had to bypass a number of them. Anyone who didn’t know what to look for would have been caught in them. “I haven’t seen a soul until you appeared.”  
  
There’s more she’s not saying but he lets it be. She’ll tell him when she’s ready.  
  
That moment seems to come that night, the two of them curled together in her bed, one of his hands stroking down her side leisurely. She’s half lying against his chest, her head tucked underneath his chin.  
  
“Tell me what you’ve seen,” she asks, and he does. He recounts for her all the information he’s gathered, the conversations he’s had. She listens without saying a word, absorbing it all as if every word is water and she’s dying of thirst. When he’s done, she makes a little sound in her throat.  
  
He frowns, concerned. “What is it?”  
  
She shakes her head slightly as if she’s not quite sure how to explain it. “It’s just… It’s so strange. Nothing is how I imagined it might be.” She hesitates a moment and he curves his arm more tightly around her, holding her close.  
  
“Tell me,” he murmurs into her hair.  
  
“I feel like I’m just waiting,” she says abruptly. “Waiting for the baby to wake, waiting for someone to find us, waiting for you to come back.” She shifts in his arms, a restless movement. “I don’t think I’m made for this, Neji. I feel like I should be fighting, doing something to fight Pain. Every morning I wake up and it’s the same as the day before. The baby keeps me busy but, in my mind, I’m… I’m still the girl who used to get up at sunrise to train with you, who used to try and shake sense into Lee, I…” She trails off uncertainly and he rolls over, on top of her so that he can look into her eyes. She looks up at him, a little lost, and he presses their foreheads together gently.  
  
“We _are_ fighting,” he says, after a moment. The truth is, he feels the same way she does. Neither of them are content to stand aside while everything they love is destroyed and forgotten, but Neji has learned something from that damp and dark world out there. “Ranmaru is our future, Tenten. Raising him, teaching him… that is our duty to everyone we’ve lost. He will be the one to take retribution, to avenge Konoha. Without us, our guidance, he will never be able to achieve anything.” He touches her cheek, smoothing away a tear. “In a way, he is everything we wish we could do ourselves but cannot.”  
  
Tenten gives him a watery smile. “When did you get so smart?” she asks, twining her arms around his neck. He angles his head, brushing their lips together.  
  
“Some people say I’m a genius,” he answers quietly.  


* * *

  
  
They make a box and fill it with all the little things that could give them away - old photos, their last mission assignment with all four of their team’s signatures, a key to the now demolished Hyuuga gates, and a forehead protector Neji had once thought lost.  
  
“Where did you get that?”  
  
Tenten hands it to him. “Hinata gave it to me for safe keeping. I think she wanted Ran to have it, when he was old enough.”  
  
The metal is scratched in places but the Leaf on it is clear and dark. Neji sets it carefully into the box and closes the lid, putting it on the highest shelf in Tenten’s closet. They stand there looking at it for a full minute and Neji realizes they’ve tucked several lives into it - Lee, Gai, Naruto, Hinata - along with their own.  
  
Tenten takes a deep breath and releases it.  
  
“Well,” she says, “are you ready?”  


* * *

  
  
The second time he leaves is the worst. Now they know.  


* * *

  
  
A year passes this way, two.  
  
This time, Ranmaru is waiting for him when he returns, standing unsteadily in the doorway, holding on to the frame for balance. The boy’s rainwater eyes light up when he sees him.  
  
“Neji!” the child cries, fairly clearly, though the last syllable is still a little slurred. Neji doesn’t mind. He picks the child up, the boy squealing happily as they enter the house, little arms locking around his neck.  
  
“Where’s your mother?” Neji asks him.  
  
Ran gurgles. “Mama!”  
  
Tenten turns from her place at the kitchen sink where she’d been watching them from the window. Her smile brings him to life again, as it always has.  
  
“Welcome home,” she says.  
  
 **THE END.**


End file.
